Transcript Local Unrest, and

‘Revolt of the poor’ and search
for a Post-Apartheid South Africa
Tshepo Madlingozi
ANC: From Liberation Movement to
Ruling Party Workshop
Frankfurt, 06 October 2012
ANC: 1960-1980- Obscurity
• ANC Banned - leaders in exile or jail; underground
structures weak
• Military campaign ineffective
• White civil society in cooperation with Apartheid
government. For Blacks, only welfare CSO’s allowed
• International support lukewarm
• Soweto Uprising in 1976 revitalises oppositional
politics
1980-1990:
ANC’s Leadership of Struggle
• As the most established structure, ANC absorbs the
thousands of 1976 militants fleeing SA
• ANC Benefits from injection of young radical recruits
• International Anti-Apartheid Campaign intensifies
(Sanctions, cultural boycotts etc.)
• Switch to ‘civil rights’ language (ANC Constitutional
Principles in 1989)
The UNITED DEMOCRATIC FRONT
Civics and “People’s Power”
• Mid-1980s “civics” injected widespread radical
political agency through ‘insurrections’
• ‘Insurrection’ against local apartheid control & harsh
economic policies
• Mutual sharing and diffusion of radical tactics
renders country “ungovernable
• Many legal advocacy organisations also founded
The People Shall Govern
‘Pre-figurative democracy’
ANC: 1990-1994
• Returning ANC assumes leadership of the
Mass Democratic Movement
• Exiles vs ‘in-xiles’: secrecy, paranoid and
democracy centralism
• ‘Nationalisation is our policy’ Mandela, 1990
• February 1991 UDF disbands
• ‘Civic movement’ forced to demobilise and
assimilate into ANC branches
• ‘We have never been socialist’ Mandela, 1991
Mandela’s Status
Post-94: Hollowing out of ‘civic society’
• 1992 South African National Civic Organisation
formed to focus on ‘local development’
• Biggest ‘civil society’ group, COSATU (3 million
members) enter into tripartite alliance with ANC
• Funding patterns favour “democracy-building” NGOs
• By 1996 there were 98, 000 ‘civil society’
organisations – majority in housing, development
and housing.
• Civil society dominated by formal NGOs, research
organisations and legal advocacy organisation
1996: Shifting GEARs
• First social movements: Coalition of Gays and Lesbian Equality
(1994); Khulumani (1995), Treatment Action Campaign (1998)
• 1996 Mandela imposes an austerity programme – Growth,
Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) – “non-negotiable”
• Under GEAR: privatisation and outsourcing (retrenchments in
public service); liberalisation of economy (massive
retrenchments in textile sector)
• 1998: Cut-backs in local government funding: water and
electricity cut-offs and thousands of evictions
2000: Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, AntiPrivatisation Forum, Mandela-Park Backyard Dwellers
2001: Western Cape Anti-Eviction Committee and
Durban’s Concerned Citizen Forum
Anatomy of Local movements
• Membership: unemployed or precariously employed
township residents
• Funding: membership fees and donations by leftist
intellectuals and NGOs.
• Ideology: Claimed Marxism and socialism.
• Tactics: street barricades, re-connection of services,
forceful reinstalment into homes, disruptive marches
and vandalism of state property
• Goals: increased social welfare in the short term; in the
long term “decommodification” and “socialism”
State Response: MARGINALISATION AND
CRIMINALISATIONS
• Vilification (“white lackeys”, counterrevolutionaries”, enemies of the people”)
• Counter-movements
• Co-optation
• Criminalisation & suppression
State repression
“Rebellion of the poor”
• Mid-2000: most social movements destroyed
by (a) State repression; (b) strategic confusion;
(c) internal in-fighting
• From mid-2000 – the rise of “service delivery”
protests
• Difference between ‘established’ social
movements and “service delivery” protests:
- “spontaneous”; un-organised; issue-specific;
more violent
Community Protesters take over
Local unrest and democracy
• Revolts lasts for 4 days: end because of state
repression; meeting with senior ANC leaders;
promise made or lack of media attention
• 10-year “rebellion of the poor” has had minimal
impact
• Good: highlighted corruption; exposes lack of
service-delivery and failure of local government
• Bad: ‘perpetual mobilisation’ means can be
mobilised for negative things
ANC degenerates
ANC ‘for sale’
POST-COLONIAL ECONOMIC
EXCLUSION
• Increasing Urban Poverty: 48% living below
the poverty line (39 euros/month).
• Chronic unemployment: Officially 23% (42%)
• Entrenched Inequality: average black worker
USD 1 524, average white worker earns USD
8 270
• Poor basic service delivery, commercialisation
& policies of cost-recovery
POST-COLONIAL POLITICAL EXCLUSION
• Local councillors more accountable to party
leaders than local communities
• Ward committees ‘colonised’ & ‘hijacked’ by
political parties and intra-party factions
• No proper consultation when drafting local
Integrated Development Programmes and
local budgets
• Party leaders, business leaders and state
officials & other elites dominate
Why “violent” protests?
Three key issues
• Land Redistribution
• Racial equality
• Social justice (access to employment, basic
services, transformation of masculinities)
Wither ‘Civil society’?
• March 2011: 76,175 “non-profit organisations”
• Provincial spread: Gauteng (32 per cent) and
KwaZulu-Natal (20 per cent); Free State,
Mpumalanga and North West (at 6 per cent).
• Sectoral spread: Most of the NPOs are in the social
services sector (34 per cent),then community
development and housing (21 per cent), then religion
(12 per cent) and education and research (11 per
cent)
• Biggest growth: professional business org’s (28%);
legal advocacy org’s (22%)
What is to be done?
• ‘Civil society’ dominated by “Non-governmental
organisations”: middle-class staff, well-resourced
offices, and “in-system” tactics (publish a lot,
media campaigns and litigation)
• No substantive uncertainty
• Mass-based, popular movements need to be
revitalised and supported
• ‘Community revolts’ need to become
movements; and co-ordinate at a national level
• Solidarity, not charity……